You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.
I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.
Corporations have learned long ago the importance of properly identifying your audience, and the Fediverse is not exempt from that rule. Lemmy is the Fediverse version of Reddit and Mastodon is the Fediverse version of Twitter, and just like these two giants could live together with each other and also with Instagram without stepping on each other’s toes, so do their Fediverse versions can live with the Fediverse version of Instagram, PixelFed.
Now we’re just missing a Fediverse version of Facebook.
There is Friendica… yeah the name doesn’t roll of the tongue, and I only remember just for this comment… no shade to it
Zuck would sue if they’d called it FediBook.
And Nextdoor
I’m excited. I’m one of those users, but I haven’t used it much because I can’t find followers. To be fair, I never used Instagram. I like the fediverse, I usually see the same articles get sent through other centralized communities other than reddit (tildes, hacker news, etc), but I enjoy the community discussion the best around here.
Yeah, I never used Instagram or Twitter so getting started on Pixelfed or Mastodon seems a bit daughnting for me. But I assume it you like platforms like that, you just search out a few people you enjoy and then add more from their content and others do the same and eventually it’ll all click into what people had in those corporate owned and controlled products.
I find it sort of shocking that you didn’t think people who use different types of social media would be swayed by non-micro blogging specific platforms. Nobody wants to join the fediverse because it’s the fediverse. They want to join something that’s fun and similar to what they’re used to.
Micro blogging sucks. I hate it. I’ve always hated Twitter and none of that hate has come from anything related to who has owned it or their policies. I’ve just genuinely never felt a desire to communicate with 280 characters (historically 140). The discussion threads are also garbage and all over the place. Why would someone who is used to platforms like Reddit or Instagram want to use Mastodon?
Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
Yes, it’s done “not be a micro blogging platform”.
I’m aware Mastodon doesn’t always have the same character limits that Twitter does, but that’s apart from the point.
I really enjoy Mastodon. Writers create threads to get around character limits. I actively search out others so I don’t need algorithms to chose for me. If you want spoon-fed it’s not for you though.
We feel good.
Fine with me.
- The official Pixelfed app just has a nicer looking UI
- There’s not really a competing app for people leaving Insta like there is Bluesky vs Mastodon
- Pixelfed’s content is mostly visual so it’s easily digestible to casual users and you don’t have to scroll past dry Fedi arguments
- Better discover features so users don’t have to do a bunch of legwork to find who to follow
Just my guesses though, but like any social media it really depends on if big creators will switch and if users stick with it over time
This.
Discovery and user abstraction are Lemmy’s biggest issues and we are not addressing them to the degree we should.
I know there’s some stuff on all those centralized platforms that’s way over the top, but most of it is actually pretty helpful. And you’ll miss it once you switch here.
Is the iPhone app still missing darkmode?
What about Android? I don’t see dark mode in options.
Dang for some reason I thought Android had it.
We can’t want the Fediverse to get bigger but be scared of normies when it does. I say welcome in! We should be mindful to listen to the new recruits, because their feedback is the most unbiased.
So far so good! Some very unscientific observations from spending an absurd amount of time scrolling local on pixelfed.social:
The people coming from Instagram and TikTok seem way less grumpy than the microbloggers. People are having a lot of fun and not complaining about much. It’s kind of a trip seeing happy, joyful people on the Fediverse to be honest. Everything in the world suuuuuuuucks right now, so it’s felt like a bit of a refuge. Sometimes I’ll accidentally bounce over to the global feed and oh man is the change in tone jarring.
People don’t seem to have a problem with servers like the Twitter migrants did. Folks are still talking about it a lot on Mastodon though. I’ve literally not seen a single post about Pixelfed being “too complicated” to succeed, whereas it was (and is) pretty common to see “this place is great and all, but…” posts in the microblogging neighbourhood. Not sure why this is but it might be because the people coming to Pixelfed are generally younger than Mastodon users. This is just a guess, but I’d estimate the average age of Mastodon users is maybe mid-40s. Most of the people pouring into Pixelfed appear to be in their mid-to-late-20s. Perhaps those folks are just more accustomed to servers through Discord and gaming? Though people are generally captioning photos and not writing out lists of things they’re unhappy about and they could also just be unaware of servers altogether…
Pixelfed is easily the most diverse “corner” of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren’t. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.
I’ve seen a bunch of people on Instagram promoting Feb 1st as “Global Switch Day” so hopefully it’ll keep blowing up.
Pixelfed is easily the most diverse “corner” of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren’t. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.
This was a huge part of why I now spend more time over on pixelfed as opposed to here – I have a few accounts I’ve used here, and every single time I’m in a thread about a woman who’s been sexually assaulted, or about a woman’s shelter, etc, the ‘not all guys’/‘men suffer too’ bros come flooding in. I’ve logged out of accounts for weeks, switched to another one, just to let them scream into the void of my inbox for awhile, and it happens every time. I befriended a woman here when I responded to one of the most sad-to-read replies in one of those threads, that read like: “Women are often abused by men–not all men, just some, and I want to reiterate that this is about those specific men…” and it just went on and on trying to placate the inevitable furious white men in the comments section. As someone who lived as a white man for over forty years, I know just how whiny, sad, and ridiculous they look, and they they still get their way.
Over on pixelfed I haven’t once had an interaction even close to that. It’s extremely pleasant, people helping each other learn the platform, people asking for help in bad home situations, and it’s a community. People have messaged me when I made mistakes linking things in extremely pleasant ways, and two people debated alt-text (is it helpful to those who use audio captions, or is it training AI?) without once insulting each other. Lemmy was very briefly that, yet there’s a lot of tribalism that is not only unnecessary, and frankly, childish. I’m quite often embarrassed of my fellow men here.
(Well, non-binary now, yet I still feel the experiences of 40+ years of being a man are helpful.)
So anyway, I agree pixelfed is a lot more inviting, and a lot more diverse.
Lemmy once had a massive influx of new users, a lot left again and monthly active users has remained somewhat constant for a long time now. Let’s wait and see how many people actually stay on PixelFed.
IG was always much bigger than Reddit.
Good to see people moving to Pixelfed though.
Lemmy is full of bad news, hate and toxicity while pixelfed is full of artists and people sharing cool pictures and their passion. Visiting my pixelfed account from 2023 a few days ago set such a contrast with what I see on lemmy that I started using it regularly. It really felt weird to visit such a wholesome place after using lemmy for a long time. Now I use pixelfed to balance out the bad stuff from lemmy for maintaining my mental health and to appreciate the art which is not common on lemmy.
Many groups of lemmy are full of political content but you can block them and still have a decent amount of contents.
The political stuff is leaking into any other community though. I’ve already blocked every politics specific and news specific community and a handful other communities and I still get a lot of that. I’m also blocking a few keywords as well, this stuff just gets through regardless of what you do and in no small amount either.
Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
On this topic I just want to point out the microblog format with twitter even BEFORE musk bought it had gotten very cold, harsh and toxic.
As a result the most positive thing you can say about people’s feelings about microblogging is that they are bored of it (in terms of it having inspiring potential) even if they use it daily themselves and like it.
I don’t think that is fair to mastodon or microblogging, it is just how the ships happened to sink as they crashed into the reef.
I say this all to emphasize that it is ok for mastodon not to get hit by massive hypecycles. Mastodon is useful and awesome, if people see it is as boring I say let that be a compliment because that means people are beginning to slowly trust the medium again.
Twitter/musk made people REALLY sad about microblogging and it is going to take time for people to get excited about it again like they do for the 'grams and the 'toks.
Pixelfed is really easy to engage with and get a feed started. I think that’s let to its popularity growth. I’ve added mastedon and peertube and neither has made it as easy to onboard.
I still remember the curve with Lemmy. Pixelfed is clearly the easiest to get started with, and then it’s just pictures!
Don’t wanna throw cold water on what should be a celebration, but are these all distinct active users? I have separate accounts on Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, and Loops–do I still count as one active user, or am I four? If the latter, I think it’s plenty likely that others like me have simply gotten used to the first fedi platform they chose and are branching out as they learn about more. Maybe doesn’t account for all the growth, but would explain away some of the meteoric rise.
